The Nebraska football team’s season officially opens up on Saturday and there is a lot on the line when it comes to its contest against Northwestern. However, there’s very little doubt that there’s plenty on the line for every game after that.
Scott Frost cleaned house when it came to the offensive staff. When the upheaval was complete, only tight ends coach Sean Beckton managed to keep his job. Mark Whipple was brought in as quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator. Mickey Joseph was brought in as wide receivers coach. Donovan Raiola is the new offensive line coach and Bryan Applewhite is the Huskers’ new running back coach.
Along with a new cast of offensive coaches, there are plenty of new players on the Nebraska football roster this year. The hope is that Frost and company can finally not only get a winning record but really start a rebuild of the program.
So what’s going to happen in 2023? There are some opponents on the schedule that seem like they should be pushovers. The problem is that coming off a 3-9 campaign of their own, it’s pretty hard for the Huskers or their fans to take any opponent too lightly.
Yes, the schedule seems weaker than maybe any schedule since Frost arrived in Lincoln. But it’s possible that there are more questions than any Frost team has run up against because of the new staff and new players.
All of this is to say that if I go 12-for-12 with these predictions, you can assume I’m a genius. If I get a ton wrong, it’s because Nebraska football is an enigma and I can’t be held accountable.
The Nebraska football team’s schedule has long been billed as quite a bit easier than what it was in 2021. That’s one of the many reasons why people think the Huskers will have it pretty easy to get six wins.
Of course, if the Cornhuskers are going to get to six wins, their season opener against a Northwestern squad that went 3-9 a year ago is a must-win.
There are two factors that could mean it won’t be. The first is that Pat Fitzgerald generally doesn’t have two bad seasons in a row. In fact, 2013 and 2014 are the only seasons where he posted a losing record in consecutive years.
The last time Northwestern posted a 3-9 record under Fitzgerald, it turned around the next year and went 7-2.
There’s also the fact that the Huskers have been very slow starters to the season under Scott Frost. The team is just 1-3 with the former NU signal caller at the helm in season openers. That one win? A less than impressive 35-21 win over South Alabama that saw Nebraska leading just 14-7 at the half.
So does that mean I think Northwestern can pull off the upset? They certainly can, but I don’t think they will. The Wildcats just don’t have much in the way of weapons on offense. While they are strong on both the offensive and defensive line, there’s just not much there at the skill positions.
Northwestern hasn’t even named it’s starting quarterback and while that can be a bad thing for opponents on occasion, this time around the quarterback battle is between Ryan Hillinksi (who had the worst QB rating on the team a year ago) and sophomore Brendan Sullivan who has never taken a college snap.
I think the Nebraska football team’s defense gets the edge, even as the offense gets off a bit clunky with all these new parts trying to mesh under some new coaches.
Nebraska 20, Northwestern 13 (Huskers are 1-0)
The Nebraska football team will play its first regular season game in the United States just six days after playing a game in Ireland.
It’s certainly possible that this could be a kind of trap game for the Huskers because the one constant under Scott Frost is that the team has been consistently inconsistent.
So yes, the Huskers could lose to North Dakota. But it’s important to note that the Fighting Hawks are not the Bison. In other words, this isn’t the FCS champion North Dakota State. Don’t make the mistake at least one national pundit did recently.
North Dakota finished 5-6 a year ago and again, while the Cornhuskers can’t really look down on any team’s record from 2021, it’s a safe bet to say that Nebraska has no business really allowing the Fighting Hawks to be in this game.
However, it’s important to note a second time that Casey Thompson and company are going to be fighting off some jet lag. They’re going to be feeling as though they’re going on short rest.
One of the longest-standing arguments in college football is that a team’s biggest improvement will be from Week 1 to Week 2. That hasn’t always been the case with Frost’s crew. And his group hasn’t had to adjust to coming back into the country before.
Having said all that, I’m not crazy enough to predict that the Nebraska football team is going to lose to an FCS squad that couldn’t even beat six other FCS teams a year ago.
Nebraska 35, North Dakota 10 (Huskers are 2-0)
The Nebraska football team took a very calculated risk with the way it laid out the schedule in 2022 and that risk was “we’re going to play a cupcake non-conference schedule before we get to the big boys.
It could work.
The Huskers could warm up against Northwestern and North Dakota and then in Week 3, Georgia Southern and be more ready for the meat of their schedule.
It could also backfire and have the Cornhuskers ill-prepared for better teams further down the road. Northwestern offsets that a little as they are at least a Power 5 team.
Georgia Southern is very much not a Power 5 team. Nor were they anything close to a talented squad in 2021. While both Nebraska and Georgia Southern finished last year with a 3-9 record, it’s safe to say they are not on the same level. And not just because the Eagles had a 27-point loss to Southern Alabama last year.
It actually wasn’t that long ago that GSU was a good program. They won 10 games in 2018. But the school has been on a downward swing.
Enter former USC head coach Clay Helton who is certainly a well-known name if nothing else. Unfortunately for Eagles fans, there’s almost certainly going to be some growing pains in year one of the Helton regime.
The Sun Belt school has long been known as a triple-option, power-running team. Helton is going to transition them to a pro-style spread offense. Husker fans certainly know how hard it is to successfully go from a running team to a passing team in one year.
Nebraska 42, Georgia Southern 3 (Huskers are 3-0)
Last year, the Oklahoma game was the first of many contests where the Nebraska football team looked like it might pull off the upset, before fading down the stretch.
Can they actually finish the job in 2022? There’s certainly a possibility.
The Sooners, by all accounts, could be set up for a down year. Both their quarterbacks from a year ago are gone. Spencer Rattler transferred to South Carolina and Caleb Williams followed former head coach Lincoln Riley to USC.
That means that new head coach Brent Venables (who has long been a defensive guy) will have to rebuild the Sooners’ offense to a point with brand new quarterback Dillon Gabriel, who last played for UCF.
Yes, the Nebraska football game against Oklahoma is also a game of “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.”
Gabriel put up eye-popping numbers for the Golden Knights playing for Frost’s replacement, but that was against AAC opponents and it was before he suffered a season ending injury early in 2021. Is he back and fully healthy? Will he be able to pick up where he left off? Those are questions we won’t know for a few weeks.
The flipside of that is that Oklahoma is chock full of talent all over the place. Even if this is a down year, this is an honest-to-goodness contender for a Big 12 title if nothing else. There’s also the fact that the Sooners are the first really powerful squad the Huskers have faced off against all season.
If the Nebraska football team is really changed, and the whole shooting themselves in the foot thing is really behind them, the Huskers could start the year 4-0. I think this is exactly the type of game where bad habits will rear their ugly head, especially against a very good Oklahoma defense.
Oklahoma 21, Nebraska 17 (Huskers are 3-1)
There were few teams in the Big Ten that had worse records than the Nebraska football team. Indiana was one of them.
That’s why, like the Huskers, the Hoosiers are going to be playing with a coaching staff that is quite new and a ton of new players at positions of importance.
Now that we’ve moved past the part of the schedule where the non-conference cupcakes lived and the Huskers have lost their first game of the year, predicting just what’s going to happen is going to get harder.
On the one hand, Indiana was 2-10 and didn’t win a single conference game last year. On the other, losses tend to snowball for Scott Frost and the Nebraska football program.
Is Indiana bad enough that even if the Cornhuskers are a bit rattled, they can still pick themselves up and right the ship? Think Northwestern in 2021.
The Huskers were coming off two tough losses to OU and Michigan State and people wondered if they would lay another egg against the Wildcats. Instead, Nebraska got its only conference win of the season 56-7 and looked poised to really turn the thing around.
Indiana might not be as good as last year’s Northwestern team was. Certainly the team isn’t as disciplined as Pat Fitzgerald programs tend to be.
I think Casey Thompson and a Huskers’ offense that was largely bottled up the week before gets to take out its frustrations out on the Hoosiers.
Nebraska 38, Indiana 20 (Huskers are 4-1, 2-0 in the Big Ten)
The last time the Nebraska football squad played at Rutgers, it was thanks to the very odd 2020 schedule that had the Big Ten play a kind of tournament where the even the worst teams in each division got the chance to square off against one another.
In that game, the Scarlet Knights gave the Huskers all they could handle for a good part of the game and looked like they might even pull off the upset.
However, the Huskers were eventually able to right the ship and topple Rutgers in a battle of the worst.
Fast forward to 2022 when Nebrasks is just two wins away from bowl eligibility and Rutgers is suffering through another mediocre if not outright bad season.
Rutgers will be coming off a spanking by Ohio State and NU will be coming off a bouncback effort against Indiana.
To keep the comparison to Northwestern and 2021 going, will the Huskers turn back into a pumpkin and lose the rest of their games? I don’t think so. At least not yet.
However, Greg Schiano is a pretty darn good college coach. He’s shown especially to be one when he’s taking on a roster that is considered an underdog.
There’s also quarterback Gavin Wimsatt, who raised some eyebrows towards the year end in 2021. I think the Huskers are going to pull off the win here, but it’s not going to be a pretty victory and will not be the blowout some will predict.
Nebraska 30, Rutgers 27 (Huskers are 5-1, 3-0 in the Big Ten)
The Nebraska football team’s tilts against Purdue have been much better than people expected when the Huskers joined the Big Ten.
Nebraska is just 1-3 against the Boilermakers under Frost and one has to wonder if that poor record has to do with the then new Huskers head coach calling his game against Purdue a “winnable” game.
The West Lafayette school definitely took offense to that comment, beating NU 42-28 that year. That score does happen to be the largest point spread in the last four games between the division rivals and last year’s 28-23 loss for Nebraska was another one of those “close” contests.
I think this year, with Aidan O’Connell having the chance to prove that he’s the best quarterback in the conference not named CJ Stroud, this game could be leaning more towards a bit of a blowout.
When looking at the Huskers schedule, people tend to point to Iowa and Wisconsin and even Minnesota as the big slugfests on the schedule. Purdue should really be considered more of a threat than they are.
I think this game has the ability to be the first real stinker the Cornhuskers have, for a couple of different reasons. They might be overconfident with that 5-1 record. It will also be the first time all year they’ve played two straight road games.
And it just feels like there’s going to be one of those games every year where Nebraska just looks pretty incompetent. Mostly, it’s been against bad enough teams that the games didn’t turn into blowouts. This time it does.
Purdue 38, Nebraska 20 (Huskers are 5-2, 3-1 in the Big Ten)
Purdue isn’t the only squad that the Nebraska football team has had unexpected problems against since Scott Frost came to town. The Huskers have also had some real issues against the Illinois Fighting Illini.
That was also before Brett Bielema came to town and started a rebuild that might be ready to pay off in 2022.
To some degree, the Illini had the same issues last year as the Huskers did, with four losses decided by one score. While those losses were to teams they probably should have routed, other than Purdue, the fact remains that Bielema almost took Illinois to a bowl game in his first season in Champagne.
This year, he’s got an upgrade at quarterback with Syracuse transfer Tommy Devito who was just named the starter earlier this week.
There’s very little doubt that the Nebraska football team is going to want some revenge for starting off the 2021 season with a loss to Illinois in a game that set the tone for the 3-9 campaign.
They’re also going to be looking for some revenge after their first big loss of the 2022 season. However, I think this is where the Huskers start to do what they’ve done a bit too much during Frost’s term. I think they come out and shoot themselves in the foot over and over against an Illinois team they always seem to take lightly.
I think the Illini are the first loss of the seasons they’ll be expected by Cornhuskers fans especially to be able to roll
Illinois 24, Nebraska 20 (Huskers are 5-3 and 3-2 in the Big Ten)
One of the most interesting things about the Nebraska football program’s stay in the Big Ten is the number of teams that Husker fans view as inferior that the Cornhuskers have had real problems getting over the hump against.
Count the Minnesota Golden Gophers in that group. NU beat PJ Fleck and the Gophers quite handily in Frost’s first season but has dropped three straight to the Big Ten West rival since.
Two of those three losses have at least been close and the fact that the Nebraska football team took a 9-4 Minnesota team to the wire is one of the reasons fans are able to claim Frost did a better job last year than the record indicates.
Still, at the moment, it’s hard to argue against Minny simply being on another level than Nebraska. That’s despite the fact that all of college football knows what the Gophers want to do on offense.
One reason they still win despite being quite one-dimensional on offense is because they usually have a pretty stout defense and that squad returns seven starters this year.
Once again, the big contributor here is whether or not this Huskers squad is still as emotionally delicate as they’ve appeared in the past. If they are, then two straight losses is going to start to really snowball this week against a team that was a couple of points shy of winning 11 games last year.
I think the losing streak against the Gophers continues in 2022.
Minnesota 17, Nebraska 10 (Huskers are 5-4 and 3-3 in the Big Ten)
It’s no secret that one of the reasons the Nebraska football team could be having a much different season than these predictions are showing so far is because their schedule has a lot of squads on the schedule that could be a lot worse than they look at the moment.
The Michigan Wolverines are not one of those teams. As much as I hate to admit it, Jim Harbaugh seems to have that team starting to really hum, even if the Wolverines did stumble quite badly against Georgia in their bowl game.
Michigan is easily the toughest out on the Huskers schedule and to add to the degree of difficulty, the Nebraska football team is going to be going into the Big House on a three game skid.
A team that hasn’t been to a bowl in five years that has been sitting one the cusp of eligibility for three weeks is almost certainly going to have a lot to play for.
There’s no indication that the Cornhuskers play better when there’s a ton on the line. In fact, it’s these types of games where they tend to make mistakes that have fans shaking their heads.
Since Scott Frost arrived in Lincoln, he’s faced off against Harbaugh twice. His squad got obliterated by the Wolverines in their first meeting. Last year’s contest was a real barn burner.
This year, I think they split the difference and now things get very, very interesting for the Nebraska footbal team.
Michigan 35, Nebraska 24 (Huskers are 5-5 and 3-4 in the Big Ten)
If things go the way I think they will this season, the Nebraska football team will be in a full-on tailspin when the Wisconsin Badgers come to town. However, this is where I think the Huskers finally find a way to overcome adversity and finally get over the hump.
The Cornhuskers are 0-4 against the Badgers since Frost came to town and last year’s seven-point loss was the only time NU has really been in the game from start to finish.
That’s why I find it a bit strange that this is going to be the game that finally clinches a bowl berth for the Huskers and allows the entire fanbase to take a collective big sigh and get ready for a postseason.
While I think Minnesota’s one-dimensional offense will still allow it to overcome the Huskers, I feel like NU can handle Wisconsin’s version of that attack, especially in Memorial Stadium at the end of the year.
That facility is going to be rocking as it will be the Nebraska football team’s final home game of the year and will literally make or break the season.
This is going to be a defensive slugfest for the Huskers but in the long run, I think they are able to come up with just enough offense to pull off the big upset. These kinds of games seem to pop up all the time when it comes to the Big Ten. Why can’t the Cornhuskers be the one to pull off the shocker this time around?
Nebraska 14, Wisconsin 10 (Huskers are 6-5 and 4-4 in the Big Ten)
While neither the Nebraska football team nor Iowa seem to want to admit it, this season-ending game has, in many ways, replaced Colorado at the height of the era when the Buffaloes and Huskers were constantly trading shots with one another at the end of the year.
There also seems to be a really, really deep dislike between the two schools that usually shows up in the week leading up to this game, even if that week has been Thanksgiving week as well.
While Scott Frost is 0-4 against Kirk Ferentz, every single game between the two teams has been within one score and there have been more than a few where one play could have completely changed the tone and tenor of the game.
Iowa is one of those teams that is confounding because they simply never look like a team that should be winning eight or nine games every year. However, they continue to be a team that limits mistakes and lets the other team shoot themselves in the foot year in and year out.
I think this year, Nebraska football flips the script a bit.
Feeling quite confident coming off a win against Wisconsin that put the Huskers in a bowl game, I think they going into Kinnick stadium with a chip on their shoulder and wanting to get their first win against another Big Ten West rival under Frost.
This will be the game that allows the Cornhuskers to say they also didn’t just squeak into a bowl with the bare minimum of wins. That’s going to be more important for Frost’s chances of sticking around than he’s willing to admit.
Nebraska 27, Iowa 17 (Huskers are 7-5 and 5-4 in the Big Ten)